Why your fingers wrinkle in water (and what it can reveal about your health) via BBC

Pieds ridés posés sur une surface en salle.
Pieds ridés posés sur une surface en salle.

The skin on our fingertips and toes shrivels like prunes when soaked for a few minutes in water. But is this an adaptation that occurred to help us in our evolutionary past? And what can it reveal about your health today?

Spend more than a few minutes soaking in a bath or paddling around a swimming pool and your fingers will undergo a dramatic transformation. Where there were once delicate whorls of lightly ridged epidermis, engorged folds of ugly pruned skin will now be found.